By Sanina Clark

“A white man decides my math / skills are better than what others thought. / Honors algebra will be the new home I / cannot speak of to my neighborhood / friends. They wouldn’t get it.” 

Just one of many lines that slapped me while reading Acosta’s poetry. Acosta’s writing is filled with painful, ridiculous truths that echo my own. I spend a lot of time worried I sound insane when recounting my childhood, but Acosta’s melancholy validation makes me feel… less so. 

When I was in second  and third grades, I lived with my mother, little brother and a rabbit in a North Carolinian project. It was already Hell, but the start of my first school year there made it even more Hellish than usual. While I rode the bus with the other poor, Black kids from the projects, I was not in any classes with them. Like Acosta, a white man, possibly multiple white men, decided I was smarter than originally thought when I tested high on the placement exams. So when I walked off the poor, Black bus, I was escorted through multiple hallways to the other side of the school. The white side. 

“Mami, the one who embraced the Blackness in her, in her husband, in her daughter because / she knew her love was the only flag that mattered, the only country without borders or castes.”

There were only two other Black kids (twins) and three Latinx kids, one of whom was only there as a translator because his cousin was a mathematical genius, but spoke little English. Every day I spent on that side of the school was another day of genuine torture waiting for me back on the schoolbus. In the eyes of my Black peers (and their parents), I thought I was better than everyone else, had chosen whiteness and was, therefore, an enemy. I was beaten up weekly on the bus, not even the driver would help. 

Meanwhile, on the “white side” of school I was constantly tokenized by white teachers who were surprised at my “eloquence” and by how “clean” I was. White parents told their white children that it was okay to be friends with me because I wasn’t “like other Black kids.” 

I was seven. 

I’m now twenty-seven and it still fucking hurts. 

So when I say that Acosta slapped me several dozen times, I say it with reverence. I say it because I feel seen. I feel heard. I feel understood. Even when it’s not my experience specifically that she’s writing about, but the experience of my family. Colorism is an unfortunate common denominator.

Though my last name is Clark, I am the eldest grandchild, of the eldest grandchild of the Garcia family line. My paternal great-grandmother was born to an Idigenous woman and Puerto Rican man. But she was born too brown, so her father left the family, occasionally coming back to knock her mother up again and produce “real” Puerto Rican offspring. Granny was treated like shit and had it instilled in her from a very young age that she wasn’t a “real” Latina. Fast forward to the birth of my father and his twin sister, who had a dark skinned Black father and came out dark skinned as well. Despite her own experience with colorism, Granny still proceeded to lovingly call her grandchildren “darkies.” 

My father never identified as Afro-Latino because he wasn’t allowed to. Because his mother was never allowed to be Latina. Because her mother was never allowed to be Latina. So when, this past June, I stood at the Garcia family plot, holding my grandmother’s ashes, waiting to bury her with her mother, sister, and grandmother, I still had to ask myself if I belonged there. If I had the right to be there.

Colorism is ass. And Acosta pulls no punches in revealing the colorism in her own family. I cried during “Revolution Mami” when her grandfather attempted to deny her parents’ marriage, saying about her father, “Tu eres muy Negro.” And in Chapter 2 of “Textbook on the Desegregation of an Afro-Latinx,” when she writes, “Abuelo boycotts the wedding porque Papi is too black.” I wonder if my grandmother heard the same about my grandfather. I don’t have to wonder, though, if his race was respected in death. I know for sure that when he lost his battle to pancreatic cancer, “Black” was put on his death certificate. Unlike Acosta’s father who “was rendered white, like a ghost.” Imagine spending your whole life being told you’re too Black, only to be permanently labeled white in death. The disre-fucking-spect. I don’t know what’s written on my grandmother’s death certificate… Do I even want to know?

I cry for Acosta through the rest of the desegregation chapters as she struggles to figure out if she is Black. I want to scream out to her, “You are!” because she knows, but she doesn’t know. But she knows. “You explain in your newspaper essay that you identify as Black, you claim it, to all of Columbia College Chicago, in black and white print / a professor responds to the essay with a map of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade that shows / most Black slaves were transported to Cuba, Colombia, the Caribbean, South America, your / homes, your world is Black.” 

The thing that people still fail to understand about colorism is that it kills just as much as general racism. To look at a group of siblings and decide that some hold more value because they are lighter, is to kill the others. To refuse to acknowledge a union because one partner is “too dark” is to kill true love, at best, and a possible new generation at worst. 

Acosta doesn’t hold back in her memories of how colorism affected her family. She is also sure to remember how her family fought against it, especially her mother. “Mami, the one who embraced the Blackness in her, in her husband, in her daughter because / she knew her love was the only flag that mattered, the only country without borders or castes.” I like to believe my grandmother did and felt the same.

It’s not just Acosta’s discussion of colorism that struck me, but also her pain as an artist. I mourned for her in “Trash” in which her father throws out all of her artwork. “Papi values winning. / Anything else is trash.” How do you explain to someone that their inability to find value in something doesn’t mean it’s worthless? How do you explain that it’s not always about external recognition (though important), and that the simple act of completing a piece makes it worthy of a permanent place in the artist’s heart? That, as artists, we need our creations around to remind us what we are capable of? How do you explain to a parent that they are our first fans, our first critics? That if they don’t see the value in what we do, how are we supposed to remain encouraged to continue on? That if they don’t fight for us, we risk never learning how to fight for ourselves?

We risk never learning how to fight for our truth.  

Acosta uses her own family’s battles to ask us to evaluate not just our own internal struggles, but how our actions and reactions can play a role in someone else’s self image. In sharing her journey of self-discovery, re-discovery, and acceptance she teaches us that coming into one’s identity is a continuous process that doesn’t need an end. We are always learning, growing, and changing the ways in which we think of ourselves, each revelation proving just as important as the last.  

Sanina L. Clark (they/them) is the editor of Out of Salem by Hal Schrieve (longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature) and All City by Alex DiFrancesco (2020 Ohioana Book Awards Finalist in Fiction). Though they have worked on various kinds of books, they prioritize acquiring texts written by or about people who are queer, trans, women, or POC. They have worked with authors like Chavisa Woods, Khary Lazarre-White, and Luis J. Rodriguez. They are currently an instructor at Writopia Lab, a contributing writer for Publishers Weekly, and the editor of the Black Dawn Series under AK Press, a speculative novella series launching Fall 2021. Their bookcase is filled with YA, fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, horror, plays and queer literature. Clark is also involved in performance art and cosplay and can often be found purchasing large quantities of fake blood and tulle. They’re addicted to ramen, cat photos, tea, and Doctor Who paraphernalia. A perfect day to Clark involves lots of green tea while relaxing with a good book or anime and cuddling their cat. They really love cats.